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Marketing automation reasons to take it into account

August 25, 2014

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By: John Davidson

Manager

JD Solutions

Make no mistake: one of the priorities of most companies is to get the maximum number of data interested in your products and services. And, in full golden age of digital marketing, this information has emerged as the new black gold trading departments.

However, the fact remains that many of the companies that are dedicated to generating leads or contacts, either through an attraction marketing project (or inbound marketing) or some other form of collection-for example, by Google AdWords-, just building large databases with records of people, but not have adequate means to extract game. In fact, for these leads become customers, it is essential to manage them in one way or another.

To this end, many companies are launched with telemarketing business equipment. This strategy, however, is not always effective: although technically it is not making contact with the leads cold calls, the fact is that these leads have had little relationship with the company previously, so that the results obtained are not always desired. In the absence of any indication to prioritize the coupons, the sellers just contacting all leads indiscriminately, so the success rate is often quite low.

Given this situation, many companies are posed as follows: how to get these coupons end up as customers or at least business opportunity that is, people who in the future wish to receive information on the activities of the company. And here is where a providential aspect: marketing automation.

How marketing automation is based?

Any automation project is based on two essential elements:

1 - The lead scoring, consisting of creating a scoring system for each of the leads. This procedure is related to the features that the company has set for its buyer person, understood as their ideal buyer. For example, for a company that sells beauty products online, your ideal client would be a married between 35 and 45 year old woman.

So, based on sociodemographic and interaction criteria, the company must assign a score to each lead, employing established criteria from the profile (or profiles) of your ideal buyer.

Through the lead scoring, you try to define how many of the leads are made meet the criteria that the company has established. To do this, you can analyze the information gathered from forms or the initial data that the company already owns.

On the other hand, we must also monitor which implies that a potential customer is interested in the products and services of the company. One way to determine this involves analyzing the degree of interaction (eg, monitoring visits or downloads content value).

2 - The lead nurturing. It is based on the creation of chains of sending emails which are sent to a specific person or group of persons, which are activated when performing a specific action (usually downloadable content value). For example, the fact that someone an e-book to get off the internet can make that person begins to receive the stream of e-mails accordingly.

However, the contents will be sent according to each individual buyer, since not all right buyer profiles have the same interests or needs. In addition, chain e-mails can also be customized depending on the type of content downloaded.

Why is practical?

There are several aspects that make marketing automation a valuable ally for the sales. They are:

1- It saves time and therefore money. Have a marketing automation system makes one person can handle the lead scoring and automatic shipments alone. Otherwise, these functions should be undertaken by two or three workers. And that's not all: in addition, the automation also ensures that brokers can manage contacts and leads, or are considering the possibility of buying. Although until recently headed the department to potential customers indiscriminately, including those that do not really show much interest in the company can now focus on leads they really intend to become customers. Hence the percentage of calls that fail to close business successfully is higher.

2 - Support to segment leads based on the characteristics of the individual buyer. The lead scoring serves to clearly identify who is ideal buyer and determine whether there may be more than one. Returning to the example of the cosmetics company, your client model could be a married between 35 and 45 year old woman, but a girl of 20 years. Once all the individual buyers, the company can design different chain e-mails. This helps to improve the interaction between the company and the lead, as content and information that really are of interest to recipients are provided.

With a good identification of people and their right buyer segmentation, the company can get to convince them of the benefits of your product in a more effective manner. It also allows you to adapt to long-term to the real needs of each buyer profile.

3 - It is a commercial that is active 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We must not lose sight that has tools that are always operational, with the comfort that can be enabled or disabled at certain times voluntarily. This is achieved by sending e-mails every day of the year when it is most convenient for the people receiving the mail.

Ultimately, this advantage is really practical, because it makes the company can get in touch with your leads whenever and whatever.

4 - Contribute to obtain accurate analysis and test variations. Automation makes it easier to do a series of tests and assess the sales conversion rate offered by each buyer profiles and different lead nurturing campaigns. Given that there are online tools to measure all these parameters, it is possible to obtain a series of data to help the company draw conclusions and decide, based on the same, what actions should be undertaken in the future.

Regarding experimentation with different types of e-mails, one of the most effective options is to opt for the so-called A / B testing, based on shipping a single email with small variations in content and image . To be effective, each room versions should be sent to a single person (eg, a recipient will receive an email with the price of the product, while another will be sent a message that no data). Returning to the case of our beauty company, you can send e-mails alluding to various products to determine which is more successful: a lipstick, a wrinkle cream, etc.

5 - Makes leads move faster in the process. Typically, the number of visits a website that records exceeds that of leads, the amount of the latter is clearly superior to the real business opportunities, and that they are well above the final customers. A circumstance that could be illustrated with the image of a funnel (or funnel, in English). Using marketing automation is achieved that has achieved more visits translate into buyers, and in a much faster way.

The reason is obvious: through communications company, the company is educating potential clients on the benefits of their products. And if the content is provided as is, it is not difficult for the recipient considers the firm as an authority in your field of activity.